"A new federal report has criticized the Immigration and Customs
Enforcement's 287(g) program, which gives state and local law
enforcement agencies authority to enforce immigration laws. The
Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found the
program does not have adequate safeguards against racial profiling and
other civil rights abuses. In addition, the report said local police
officers have misused the program by targeting undocumented immigrants
who have been arrested for minor offenses. The report states "g) program
is meeting its intended purpose, or that resources are being
appropriately targeted toward aliens who pose the greatest risk to
public safety and the community." Critics of the program say many
immigrants will no longer call the local police help out of fear they
could be arrested and deported. Laura Murphy of the American Civil
Liberties Union said: "The 287(g) program, as this latest report
confirms, all but abandons the constitutional guarantees of fair
treatment and due process, and encourages racial and ethnic
profiling.""~Democracy Now!

Nina Bernstein has reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement released three dozen Haitian earthquake survivors from immigration detention in Florida yesterday. This was after more than two months in ICE custody.
"Among the first to be freed was Jackson Ulysse, 20, whose request for
release described how sounds in the jail made him fear another
earthquake and panic that he would not be able to get out. He had been
trapped when his family's apartment building collapsed in the quake, in
which many relatives died.
He and his brother, Reagan Ulysse, 25, had been detained together until
March 11, when Reagan was abruptly transferred to a distant immigration
jail, leaving Jackson not knowing where he was." -Nina Bernstein, N.Y. Times. So let me ask you this, why does it take an embarrassing article from the New York Times to shame the Obama administration into doing the right thing for immigrants?It took a march on Washington for President Obama to even give lip-service to the issue of immigration reform, and prior to the bad publicity he seemed content with doing nothing to address the promises he made when campaigning.In all fairness, I do understand that the President has a lot of his plate these days. After all, the business of deporting 400,000 immigrants in 2010 is taking up a fair amount of his administration's resources.Appalling doesn't even begin to describe it.

More of Nina Bernstein's fantastic reporting:"In Haiti, some were pulled from the rubble, their legal advocates say.
Some lost parents, siblings or children. Many were seeking food, safety
or medical care at the Port-au-Prince airport when terrifying
aftershocks prompted hasty evacuations by military transports, with no
time for immigration processing. None have criminal histories.
But when they landed in the United States without visas, they were taken
into custody by immigration authorities and held for deportation, even
though deportations to Haiti have been suspended indefinitely since the
earthquake. Legal advocates who stumbled on the survivors in February at
the Broward County Transitional Center, a privately operated
immigration jail in Pompano Beach, Fla., have tried for weeks to
persuade government officials to release them to citizen relatives who
are eager to take them in, letters and affidavits show." My colleague
David Leopold has said it best: this Administration's treatment of immigrant detainees is "a national disgrace." President Obama should be ashamed of himself.

The United States Supreme Court has just granted cert. on a case involving the issue of whether as a matter of federal law, counsel has an obligation to advise a defendant that pleading guilty to a certain offense will result in their removal from the United States.The Court ruled that constitutionally competent counsel must advise that a conviction would subject an individual to automatic deportation finding that:"It is our responsibility under the Constitution to ensure that no criminal defendant--whether a citizen or not--is left to the "mercies of incompetent counsel." Richardson, 397 U. S., at 771. To satisfy this responsibility, we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation. Our longstanding Sixth Amendment precedents, the seriousness of deportation as a consequence of a criminal plea, and the concomitant impact of deportation on families living lawfully in this country demand no less."The case has been remanded back to the the Supreme Court of Kentucky.Score one for the little guy.

Matthew L. Kolken is a trial lawyer with experience in all aspects of United States Immigration Law – including deportation defense before Immigration Courts throughout the United States, appellate practice before the Board of Immigration Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and U.S. Courts of Appeals. He is admitted to practice in the courts of the State of New York, the United States District Court for the Western District of New York, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has been a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) since 1997.